Who I Am: A Memoir (Paperback)

Description

From the voice of a generation:

...smashed his first guitar onstage, in 1964, by accident....heard the voice of God on a vibrating bed in rural Illinois....invented the Marshall stack, feedback, and the concept album....stole his windmill guitar-playing from Keith Richards....detached from his body in an airplane, on LSD, and nearly died....has some explaining to do....is the most literary and literate musician of the last fifty years....planned to write his memoir when he was 21....published this book at 67.

One of rock music's most intelligent and literary performers, Pete Townshend--guitarist, songwriter, editor--tells his closest-held stories about the origins of the preeminent twentieth-century band The Who, his own career as an artist and performer, and his restless life in and out of the public eye in this candid autobiography, Who I Am.

With eloquence, fierce intelligence, and brutal honesty, Pete Townshend has written a deeply personal book that also stands as a primary source for popular music's greatest epoch. Readers will be confronted by a man laying bare who he is, an artist who has asked for nearly sixty years: Who are you?

About the Author

As front man of The Who, PETE TOWNSHEND wrote over 100 songs and rock operas in the band's remarkable catalogue. The Who's first album, My Generation (1965), went gold in the UK, and eight more have gone gold and platinum on both sides of the Atlantic. He is one of Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. Away from music, he has also written essays for Rolling Stone and in 2005 published a novella entitled The Boy Who Heard Music.